The Life and Times of Jeff Squyres

Will, the ocean is like... the sea.

Tracy and I spent Christmas week down in Ft. Myers, Flordia, with her parents, as we have for the past few years. It was a nice week, although it still strikes me as somewhat odd being so warm for Christmas. ☺

I unfortunately didn’t get to see Tim G. (ell-tee-never-p; a fellow reservist who was called up at deployed to Ft. Huachuca at the same time as me) while we were down there (Tim and his family live in Ft. Myers as well); our schedules didn’t mesh. Doh. ☹ But we chatted on the phone for a while; he sounds like he’s doing well.

I finally remembered to bring my roller blades with me, so I got to skate through Christmas week (har har) in mid-70’s weather. Yummy.

My in-laws have a funny tradition — there’s a very strong sense of “make things come out even” throughout the family (that’s not the strange part). A direct side-effect of this is that everyone knows what everyone else is getting for Christmas (including the intended recipients). There’s a thin layer of pseudo-secrecy about the whole Christmas-present event that is a total farce. Everyone knows it, yet everyone refuses to acknowledge it. This, too, I suppose, is not that weird.

What is weird is that they still insist on wrapping all the presents. For example, my parents-in-law — they requested a specific present from us this Christmas (by brand and model number — which was great/extrememly convenient for us). We bought the item on-line and shipped it to them. It arrived, unwrapped, in a marked package about a week before Christmas. So what did my mother-in-law do? She tookit out of the box (keep in mind — the present is for her), wrapped it, and put it under the Christmas tree.

That’s just weird. ☺

3 pounds, 5.2 ounces of Christmas cards, envelopes, and postage later, Tracy and I sent our holiday wishes to family and friends. It was a repeat of our last Christmas letter: a) I wrote it, b) Tracy thought it was stupid, c) everyone else though it was hilarious, d) Tracy later begrudgenly admitted that it was “somewhat humorous.” ☺

(if you didn’t get a card, cope. If you bribe us enough, we’ll put you on the list for next year)

I finally moved the last of the users away from the old squyres.com server; I’ll stop paying Pennyhost soon enough and move 100% over to WOPR. Don’t get me wrong; Pennyhost’s service has actually been quite good over the years. But now I can stop paying them and have my own server, which is a Good Thing.

Woo hoo!

Tracy has so many frequent flyer miles on Northwest because of her trips to Asia that we got bumped up to first class on the flight home. Yummy!

(sung to the tune of “Mickey Mouse”)

S-U-G — gee, we love you!
G-A-R — are we having fun yet?
M-O-M-M-A — a wife like this rocks!